


oh so wretched, wretched, wretched

by wllgrahams



Series: ravenous wolves. [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen, Prophetic Visions, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 07:08:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4696865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wllgrahams/pseuds/wllgrahams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wakes up in hospital and Jack Crawford is there, sitting in the uninviting wooden chair beside Will’s bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh so wretched, wretched, wretched

Will Graham is choking. Every breath he tries to take rattles in his throat and sends him into a coughing fit that makes blood spurt out of his mouth. His hands shake where they press down on the gunshot wound through his chest. Soon, he’ll bleed out on the cool laminate floor, illuminated by the dim street lighting filtering through the branches of the tree outside the window. The shooter is long gone, but he remembers some details— shoulder length hair, taller than him by maybe 3 inches— even though their body was entirely covered, features obscured by the darkness.

This wasn’t unexpected. Not the break in— two in the morning, glass shattering, the creak of the front door swinging inwards. Not the gunshot ripping through his ribcage, exploding his heart and making it beat sluggishly; it’s getting slower and slower as the blood leaks out of his chest. In his subconscious he knew he was going to die as soon as he heard a car purr to a stop outside his house.

He recognised the shooter; doesn’t know from where exactly, but they were familiar. Maybe it was an estranged family member. Maybe one of his colleagues, from that life he had long, long ago. He doesn’t know. A lot of people had wanted to kill him. He takes one last, laborious breath, and passes out.

 

**

When Will bolts upright in his bed, breathing heavily (but _normally_ , thank God), there’s an alarm ringing. He turns, shivering, to the red glow of the clock on his bedside. It’s 5 AM. The alarm went off by accident. Will wipes a hand over his face, too used to the cold sweat to cringe at it, and reaches for his phone to call Jack Crawford.

 

**

“Yes, that’s all I remember, Jack.”  Will sighs for what feels like the hundredth time, eyes locked on the wall clock behind Jack’s desk. Looking at Jack is difficult. The man is always so full of _expectation_.

“Are you absolutely sure? We need _every_ detail, Will. I’m sure you appreciate how difficult it is for us to act on so little information.” Jack is leaning towards him like it will help get him more answers. _Imagine how difficult it is for me_ Will doesn’t say. What he does say is:

“I don’t even know if this one is real.”

“Well you should figure it out.” Jack says, full of single minded conviction, and Will laughs. It sounds pained. It is.

“Why do you even rely on this so much? I don’t. These dreams…” _prophecies_ would be more accurate, but that sounds like the plot of a bad film. The Exorcist? No. He doesn’t watch films often. “...they’re profoundly _un_ reliable.”

“It’s more than what we can do without them. Do you know how many murders we’ve prevented since...well..” Jack pauses “..since you started helping us?” It’s rhetorical. Jack will tell him whether Will wants to know or not. “Fifty. At least. Maybe closer to a hundred. Your help is absolutely invaluable so please, if you remember— ”

“You know what? I don’t know why I even bother.” Will stands up and shrugs on his jacket. It’s wax, heavy, perfect for fishing in the autumn. “I have a class to teach in thirty minutes. I’ll call you.”

The _don’t contact me first_ rests unsaid.

 

**

How is starts is like this:

 

Will is standing in his lecture hall. His first lecture that didn’t leave him nauseous and dizzy after fifteen minutes. A full hour and a half of describing murders in gruesome detail, of broken, slashed bodies flickering from the projector and settling on the board behind his head. Some students congratulate him on the way out, polite compliments paid from a distance. They know not to touch him.

He is standing in his lecture hall, and then his neck has been ripped open and he’s holding his artery together but he’s dying, bleeding out, slowly, excruciatingly—

He wakes up in hospital and Jack Crawford is there, sitting in the uninviting wooden chair beside Will’s hospital bed.

“Tell me what you remember,” he says. Will does.

 

**

After the hospital, there’s a lot of paperwork. Jack tell him that a student had lingered in the hall after all the others had left, had seen Will’s body flicker for a split second before he collapsed.

“He had blood..” the student had gestured to her neck with shaking hands as she sat opposite Jack in the ER, “all over. It was like his— his throat had been torn open.”

An hour later a man was found bleeding out in an alley. His head had been almost severed from his body, but he was still alive, trying to hold himself together as his breath rattled through his mangled trachea.

“You already knew that though, didn’t you?” Jack says. They’re in his pristine little office. The door is closed but privacy is only an illusion— they’re surrounded by glass. Will feels like a pinned fly, inspected, scrutinised.

Will doesn’t want to answer. That would feel like an admission of something. Not guilt— responsibility, maybe. Far too terrifying to push into this claustrophobic space. Far too intimate a thing to show Jack, this jagged conflict of emotion at his core. So he shrugs instead, looking away. In the cubicle right beside the office a woman is trying— and failing— to look like she’s consumed by the paperwork piled on her desk. Her attention is focused fully on him, even if her eyes are turned away.

Will feels exposed. It’s like his skin has been scrubbed raw with the way it stings, feeling the pinpricks of a thousand eyes trying to peel away whatever cover he has left to protect himself with.

He comes back to himself just in time to hear Jack say “...we’ll need to monitor you of course. Will. Will?”

“Hm?” He turns back to Jack, who’s got his hand poised as if to grip Will’s arm, to gain his attention. Instinctively, he pulls back. Without the desk hemming him in he starts to feel almost relaxed.

“I said we’ll need to get a psychiatrist to do a check up and to monitor you.” Jack must see hesitation in Will’s face because his expression loosens, becomes almost sympathetic. “It’s only a formality. A temporary arrangement.”

Will nods. It’s not agreement; it’s defeat.

 

**

That night he dreams. He’s in a field. Everything is unnaturally silent around him. He’s not breathing— dead already then. There’s blood still dripping from his body, running down his arms in slow rivulets. Everything is numb, but he can feel that he’s impaled on something, his body pierced through cleanly, almost symmetrically.

Just before he startles awake, he sees a hulking stag standing over him, it’s breath smelling like carrion and dead flesh.

 

**

As soon as he walks into Hannibal Lecter’s office, he knows. He should be terrified, but instead he feels strangely calm as he sits on a plush leather chair. Hannibal settles opposite him, legs crossed, perfectly composed.

“Hello, Will.” he says, calculating.

Will doesn’t hesitate before he replies, voice sharp and heavy like the sound of a gavel echoing through a courtroom.

“I know what you are.”

 

**

Two months pass.

Will works with the FBI. Everything he sees he gives to them. Nearly every time they catch the killer. Days are spent hunting relentlessly for the killer— nights after reserved for celebration. The bureau has never had it this easy they say, awestruck. Soon, they’ll start to get sloppy from relying on quick autopsies, on perpetrator descriptions that are half filled before the body’s even cold, on saved victims crawling back to life in hospital beds, their easily given witness statements. From relying on Will.

Two months pass and some murders just keep piling up. They call this killer the Chesapeake Ripper officially, but everyone knows them as ‘the one who got away’. It’s the only pile of case files that still sits unsolved.

The pile grows steadily, and Will stays silent.

 

**

“You want to think you’re more than human.”

“Do I?” Hannibal’s expression doesn’t change, but Will sees his jaw tense, sharp and swift.

“Yes.” Heavy silence is punctuated by the steady rhythm of the clock. It’s a soft sound, but deafening in Will’s ears, pressing down on his head, into his eyes, everywhere.

“If I am the killer you accuse me of being,” each word Hannibal says is like a knife driven between Will’s eyes. “Then how can you continue to insist on my humanity?”

“Humans kill.” Will shrugs and focuses on a point just over Hannibal’s left shoulder. A painting. Expensive, Renaissance. He focuses on the severed calf’s head, the blood spilling out of the severed neck, the sightless gaze locked onto something just out of the frame. An ache starts behind his eyes, demanding recognition. He ignores it and looks down at the flawless Windsor knot at Hannibal’s neck. Hannibal watches him, predatory and dangerous.

“Titian. _Bacchus and Ariadne_. I always found the chaos of it intriguing.”

Will laughs and it tastes bitter and acrid in his mouth. “You found the chaos of it intriguing.” His voice is mocking. “Don’t you always.” Will’s hands grip the soft leather of the armrests; it bends, curves around the shape of his nails. Distantly, he imagines it’s Hannibal’s skin he’s gouging indents into, pressing into the elegant line of his neck, thumbs pushing down into his windpipe.

Silence stretches, stagnant and empty, over the room. Will presses harder and waits for something to snap.

**Author's Note:**

> this has been in the works for nearly a year now and i almost forgot about it until i found the draft in june...i'll probably come back to this at some point because it's definitely not finished and i'm weirdly attached to it.  
> title from fka twigs' closer.  
> [this](http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/titian-bacchus-and-ariadne) is the painting.


End file.
